Bay Area Land News - September 11, 2018
US / California / Bay Area News
Our view: California takes bold action on housing — with the boldness removed
San Francisco Business Times
Lawmakers need to do more faster in order to solve the Bay Area's housing shortage.
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Prop 10's rent controls are a California disaster with national implications, opponents say
Silicon Valley Business Journal
The proposition's opponents say it would prompt landlords and investors to abandon the rental market, existing units would deteriorate and, in the end, there would be fewer apartments.
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Condos are suddenly worth the risk as the apartment market cools
Puget Sound Business Journal
For years, an old law has kept condo developers away. Now, the hot market has builders rushing back.
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Dreamin' of a California departure?
Silicon Valley Business Journal
If the people heading for the exits are the ones responsible for driving California's economy forward, then we're in trouble.
Tech Sector Sustains Growth in Bay Area
Commercial Property Executive
A busy development pipeline, along with rising rents and property values, reflects a robust demand for office space in the region.
Sources: Facebook to eat up big chunk of Austin's 'second downtown'
Silicon Valley Business Journal
HomeAway did it. Indeed, too. Now Facebook is choosing to split in a major way its workforce between downtown and what's becoming known as Austin's second downtown. The developer of North Austin's next tallest tower announced this week that a Fortune 100 company has chosen to take all of the Domain 12 tower being built in Domain Northside. Multiple sources not directly involved in the deal told Austin Business Journal the tenant was Facebook Inc.
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Housing, Homelessness and the California Dream
East Bay Times
On any given night in California there are about 134,000 people without a home, according to annual data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That’s nearly equivalent to the population of Pasadena or Roseville sleeping on the street, on a bench or in a shelter.
Mystery of Amazon HQ2 has finalists seeing clues everywhere
SFGate
Over Labor Day weekend, a club promoter who goes by the name Purple posted a photo on Instagram from the LIV nightclub in Miami. In front of a wall graffitied with names and a single “Life Is Beautiful” sticker, Purple’s arm was casually draped over the shoulders of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, whose pants matched the host’s name.
Overbuilding is causing rents in even the hottest markets to plummet, freeze
The Real Deal
It’s a great time to be renting in America as a glut of new supply is causing rents across the country to take a nosedive. Meanwhile, the lag time between the planning and delivery of rental projects is hurting developers and landlords who are now feeling the crunch.
Gov. Brown’s new climate goal: less than zero global warming emissions
San Francisco Chronicle
Gov. Jerry Brown has repeatedly ratcheted up California’s global warming goals, setting ever-higher targets for the use of renewable power and demanding deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
Brown signs bill that mandates 100 percent clean energy by 2045 as tech companies ramp up investments in renewables
San Francisco Business Times
Bay Area tech companies like Salesforce, Facebook, Apple and Genentech have long been accelerating their own clean power ambitions.
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Exclusive: S.F. Fortune 500 company moves headquarters to Dallas-Fortworth area
San Francisco Business Times
Core-Mark, a Fortune 500 company based in San Francisco, plans to relocate its corporate headquarters to Dallas in 2019.
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Local procedures hamper housing development, Bay Area legislator says
East Bay Times
California cities and counties need to give up some control of the housing approval process if the state is going to solve its housing shortage, state Sen. Scott Wiener said Thursday, Sept. 6, at a Realtor housing conference in Los Angeles.
Californians still really like Prop. 13. Except for the big parts they don’t like.
Desert Sun
California looks a lot different than it did a generation ago. Its residents are far more diverse, and they live in a far more expensive state.
Bay Area housing crunch lacks required production
MPA Magazine
The housing crunch in California’s Bay Area is worsening as sluggish production is far outpaced by the strong labor market.
Opinion: California initiative process is out of control
San Francisco Chronicle
For Evan Low, a Democratic member of the state Assembly, the “aha moment” about the initiative process came when he was solicited by a petition gatherer outside a Sunnyvale Safeway.
Editorial: Prop. 5 worsens already-broken state property tax system
The Mercury News
California voters should reject Proposition 5, a regressive measure that would provide additional property tax breaks to long-term homeowners — especially those with pricier houses — who already pay significantly lower tax bills.
San Francisco News
Amazing photos show 160 years of bustling North Beach
SFGate
If you look at photos of North Beach from 1855, you'll see there was an actual beach and very few buildings. If you look at North Beach now, you see plenty of buildings but only a sliver of what originally gave this neighborhood so much of its identity, the Italian immigrant population.
Candidate Nick Josefowitz spending much more than District Two job pays
San Francisco Chronicle
Nick Josefowitz, a candidate for supervisor in District Two, wants the job so badly that he’s already sunk more of his own money into the effort than he would make in nearly an entire four-year term on the board.
Cities rise to shape our climate future
San Francisco Chronicle
For a few short days this week, San Francisco will be the environmental capital of the world.
SF groups to push for changes to major rezoning plan in SoMa
San Francisco Chronicle
One group wants more child care and recreation. Another is looking for more measures to fight gentrification. A third wants shorter buildings and less density. A fourth is pushing for taller buildings and more density.
SF tower leased to Facebook could set price record in sale
San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco’s Park Tower broke the record for the city’s largest single lease deal in May, when Facebook took all 755,900 square feet of office space in the building.
Mayor wants to lure modular housing factory to SF to provide both homes, jobs
San Francisco Chronicle
As San Francisco officials continue to scout locations for a factory that can churn out modular housing units, Mayor London Breed is lining up the city to be the first customer.
Women-focused co-working space to open San Francisco location in early October
San Francisco Business Times
The high-profile, women-focused co-working space will open in an 8,000 square foot location on 115 Sansome St. in early October.
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Height cut for 35-story residential tower planned on Mid-Market parking lot
San Francisco Business Times
The project, costing between $200 million and $300 million to construct, originally was set to reach the height of 366 feet, yet new numbers by architecture firm Solomon Cordwell Buenz show the tower to be only 284 feet tall.
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Controversial school board candidate withdraws from race
San Francisco Examiner
School board hopeful Josephine Zhao withdrew from the race Monday morning. The announcement came via a Facebook post after mounting controversy around Zhao’s stance on the rights of transgender students.
SF wants to use old retrofit bond money to preserve affordable housing
San Francisco Chronicle
It could soon be possible for San Francisco officials to loan out $260 million in unused bond money to preserve and grow the city’s affordable-housing stock.
Candidate Nick Josefowitz spending much more than District Two job pays
San Francisco Chronicle
Nick Josefowitz, a candidate for supervisor in District Two, wants the job so badly that he’s already sunk more of his own money into the effort than he would make in nearly an entire four-year term on the board.
North Bay News
Marin County ghost town cleared away to save Lagunitas Creek’s coho salmon
San Francisco Chronicle
The rumble of heavy machinery might as well have been harp music to Todd Steiner, who stood on a bluff next to Lagunitas Creek in Marin County last week and admired the channels and trenches the belching excavators were digging out of the banks.
The financial crisis cost Sonoma County a decade of new housing
The Press Democrat
Ten years ago this week, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., one of the world’s largest investment banks, sought protection from its creditors in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Lower Manhattan, just four blocks from the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street.
South Bay News
San Jose tops list for least affordable housing in U.S.
The Mercury News
Seven-digit bids for suburban, tear-down homes. Small one-bedrooms and converted garages rented and stuffed to capacity. Families and workers living in RVs lining local roads.
Big north San Jose deal points to hot Silicon Valley market
The Mercury News
The sale of a big office complex in north San Jose could signal a refuge for modestly sized corporations who have been squeezed in the past year by tech titans such as Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon.
Downtown San Jose hotel plans to expand at choice site
East Bay Times
Plans have expanded for a hotel tower that would sprout on a choice site in downtown San Jose, a short distance from a planned Adobe Systems campus expansion and proposed Google transit village.
Peninsula News
Enthusiasm fizzles for Google homes
Mountain View Voice
Bay Area housing advocates were thrilled last year when Mountain View leaders pledged to go hard on residential growth, transforming the corporate office park of North Bayshore into a dense urban neighborhood with 9,850 homes.
Council backs mandatory seismic retrofits
Mountain View Voice
A majority of Mountain View City Council members agreed Tuesday night that the city should adopt a mandatory seismic retrofit program to prevent older, structurally weak apartment buildings from collapsing in a major earthquake.
Housing crisis hangs over council race
Mountain View Voice
Amid expensive housing, congested roads and rising numbers of people living on the streets, Mountain View is experiencing a flurry of challenges. These growing pains for the city became the central theme for six candidates running for the City Council during their first public policy discussion last week.
Menlo Park: State board denies Willows residents' petition to switch school districts
The Almanac
Near the border with East Palo Alto, one street in Menlo Park's Willows neighborhood experiences a split on school days: Kids who live on the south side of O'Connor Street are designated to attend schools in the Menlo Park City School District, and some need only walk around the block to get to the newly completed Laurel School Upper Campus.
Hotel execs brace for battle against Measure E
Palo Alto Online
Stanford University's graduation season typically brings flush times to the Cardinal Hotel, with guests booking rooms at the downtown Palo Alto hotel months in advance.
Condo project proposed for San Antonio Road
Palo Alto Online
The developer behind a 16-home project on a former orchard site on Maybell Avenue is now pitching another housing project for south Palo Alto: a 48-condominium development on San Antonio Road.
Editorial: Stanford's development potential
Palo Alto Online
A new independent analysis aimed at determining how much more development is possible under a maximum "build-out" scenario of Stanford University's academic campus has concluded that the institution has space available to roughly triple its current square footage, to more than 44 million square feet.
Guest Opinion: Driving ourselves crazy
Palo Alto Online
The recent uproar over Mayor Liz Kniss' comment during the July 30 council meeting declaring that Palo Alto has no significant traffic problems earned her some deservedly strong reactions, including mine.
Daly City shopping center could bag some housing
San Francisco Business Times
Real estate giant Kimco has plans in the works to develop housing at Daly City's Westlake Shopping Center.
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In the Bay Area’s housing shortage, even Stanford University struggles to provide shelter
East Bay Times
The Stanford campus before the start of the fall quarter is a maze of orange cones, chain link fences and heavy equipment raising new high-rise apartments.
Woodside: Lawyer versus engineer in council race
The Almanac
With four open seats on the Woodside Town Council, the town will have four elections in November. Write-in candidates remain a possibility, but so far only one seat is contested: that of District 7, the neighborhoods along La Honda and Old La Honda roads, and areas west of Portola Road.
Professorville residents have mixed reactions to plan for private club
Palo Alto Online
Plans to convert what was once a funeral home into a private club for female workers are getting mixed reviews from the shuttered Palo Alto mortuary's neighbors, with some saying it would be a welcome addition and others saying it would only add to parking, traffic and noise problems currently plaguing their neighborhood of Professorville.
Tuesday: Menlo Park council to evaluate its travel policies
The Almanac
The Menlo Park City Council may update its policies on travel funded by taxpayers and third parties at its meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 11.
Palo Alto City Council will say tonight where it stands on state rent control proposition
Daily Post
A discussion tonight (Sept. 10) on the November ballot measures could rekindle the Palo Alto City Council’s fiery debate on rent control.
Low-income apartments proposed on Willow Road
Daily Post
MidPen Housing, a nonprofit agency, has submitted plans to build 140 low-income apartments on Willow Road in Menlo Park, across from where Facebook’s Willow Village is slated to go.
City may spend $510,000 studying the idea of ferry service
Daily Post
Redwood City Council on Monday (Sept. 10) will consider spending up to $510,000 on a study to see whether or not a ferry service ought to be operated out of the city’s port.
High-density housing proposed for San Antonio Road
Daily Post
As housing advocates bemoan the slow pace of high-density homebuilding in Palo Alto, a four-story apartment building with 48 one- and two-bedroom units could be on its way to San Antonio Road.
Tempers flare over renter protections
Palo Alto Online
Palo Alto's heated debate over renter protection turned bitter and personal on Monday night, as City Council members exchanged insults and accusations before reaching a compromise that left most feeling dissatisfied.
Palo Alto to reconsider relocation assistance in evictions
Palo Alto Online
The Palo Alto City Council signaled on Monday that it plans to revisit and possibly revise a newly adopted law that limits relocation assistance for evicted tenants to those making above the area median income.
East Bay News
Hundreds of more homes planned for Newark’s Bayside area moving forward
East Bay Times
Over 300 new homes planned for a formerly industrial area at the western edge of Newark has received the green light from the city’s Planning Commission, and will likely be considered for final approval by the City Council in October.
Berkeley rejects SB35 application for Spenger’s lot development, again
SFGate
The city of Berkeley said no, for a second and final time, to an attempt to use a contentious new state law to build a 260-unit housing complex, with half the units affordable, on Fourth Street.
East Bay college district embroiled in tumult over money, ethics as election nears
San Francisco Chronicle
It looks like a routine request of voters: a November ballot proposal in Alameda County to extend the $48-per-parcel property tax that raises $8 million a year for the area’s community colleges.
BART picks developers for huge housing and office development at Lake Merritt in Oakland
San Francisco Business Times
After a competitive process, BART selected a development team to build 519 homes and 517,000 square feet of commercial space at the Lake Merritt station in Oakland.
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Exclusive: Swiss investor swoops in to buy two East Bay office buildings for $148 million
San Francisco Business Times
Exclusive: Swiss investor swoops in to buy two East Bay office buildings for $148 million
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San Leandro extends ban on short-term rentals
East Bay Times
The city has extended a temporary ban on some short-term rental housing at least until early next year.